Mishy Lowe on wed 1 apr 98
Okay, where'd I leave off? Oh yah, Wednesday night...
On Thursday, the first session I was interested in was the History of
Glaze, a panel discussion with Val Cushing moderating. Glaze has always
been a special interest of mine and I looked forward to an informative and
educational session.
Unfortunately, the sound system in the packed ballroom had horrible tone
and the presenters seemed unwilling to get up enough on the microphone so
that we could all hear them. With all the trouble and expense NCECA takes
to arrange these sessions, it seems rather ridiculous to have horrible
sound systems that make hearing and understanding a real chore! My
husband's business is "sound", and I wished fervently that he could've been
there to go set up the system properly!
After about an hour, I couldn't take it anymore and decided to move on to
the demonstrations, hoping the sound there was better (it was a bit better
there, with lapel mics, which the panelists should have also used). I
stopped by the scholarship cup sale to see what new cups had arrived since
I dropped mine off on Wednesday, some wonderful stuff there! The
demonstrations were very interesting, Toshiko Takaezu building a large
vessel using coil and throw (slowly revolving wheel), Joe Bova building one
of his famous hares and Paula Winokur assembling a beautiful slab sculpture
piece. Unfortunately, the one shot I got of the demonstrations (Takaezu),
is blurry, but I left it up on the page anyway. Still getting used to my
digital camera, my apologies for my poor technique.
I met up with friends each time I would move from one area to another, and
so was often in conversation between the activities and distracted from one
thing to another, but this was OKAY! If I didn't make it to one thing, it
was usually because something else very interesting came up that was just
as valuable to me.
For most of the rest of Thursday afternoon, I ended up mostly hanging
around in the clayart room (can't we arrange to meet there every Friday
guys? I'd love it!), and seeing the nearby shows again. I did make it to
the Clayart breakout session hosted by Richard Burkett and was interested
to hear him talk about some amazing developments in CAD programming and 3d
rendering by computers, as well as contributing to the discussion about our
beloved list. Thursday evening there was a crowd of people in the clayart
room, spilling out into the hallway, what a party! I had the pleasure of
dinner one night (was it Thursday? geez the brain cells are getting old),
with Rose Downs, and her husband and new baby, and Bacia Edelman and
Veronica Shelford.
Friday morning, Wendy Rosen scheduled an impromptu "wholesale" meeting in
the clayart room, open to anyone interested, and she had a continental
breakfast catered to lure people to come. I have to admit, I came for the
food, but was pleasantly surprised by being treated to a host of wonderful
marketing ideas and advice that I know I can use when I am ready to
wholesale in the future.
Friday's schedule had some great stuff going on concurrently, and being
forced to choose, I decided to go see "Remembering Female Indiginous
Icons", which turned out to be a great mix of stories, memories and
wonderful slides of work and people. Later that day I went to Jim
Connell's lecture "Historical Precedents and the Modern Ceramic Artist",
WOW what a great lecture Jim thanks! Jim put together literally hundreds
of slides, comparing historical forms to many contemporary artists.
Fascinating comparisons, alongside his dynamic speaking, and I find it was
one of my favorite sessions in retrospect. Susan Filley mentioned to me
afterwards that she thinks he should repeat it every three years or so, it
was so valuable, I AGREE!
The afternoon breakout sessions had at least three or four that sounded
interesting, I chose to go to one on using organic materials in saggar and
pit-firing, I was NOT disappointed. Participants fired off idea after idea
and my pen was kept busy scribbling notes to try to remember it all.
Of course, I had to go dance Friday night, to the WONDERFUL music of Marcia
Ball, what a great band! What a voice! Excellent music, great fun dancing,
even if I did miss the obligatory streak of flesh that I heard quickly
zoomed across the stage and out...the dance floor was WAY packed by then,
so being at the outer edge, I didn't get to see a thing :-( I even deleted
one photo on my cam (only so much room) to try to sneak a shot in and
didn't even get the chance.
Saturday I had to leave to the airport by 10am so I don't have anything fun
to report, other than, even after shots of tequila and only three hours
sleep the night before, I didn't have a hangover ;-) Needless to say, when
my plane was delayed an hour on the ground, after boarding, I didn't mind
sitting out on the tarmac because I was SLEEPING!
I have put up photos of pottery and people from NCECA, but I must apologize
for not knowing everyone's names, and for any pictures with goofy looks (at
least I posted the one where *I* look like a bigmouth bass), but I wanted
to share it all with you so those who weren't there could feel a little
part of the action and those who were can recall the good times.
You'll find links to the photos at this web page. I separated it into three
pages for faster loading, photos of pots/pieces and two sections of photos
of people-
http://www.amug.org/~mishlowe/nceca98/nceca98.html
Have fun, and just call me "HTML woman" this morning! WHEW!
Mishy
Michelle Lowe, potter in the Phoenix desert \|/ |
mishlowe@indirect.com -O- | |
mishlowe@aztec.asu.edu /|\ | | |
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